The war against vendors is a cruel and senseless one. Senior government officials need to look critically at themselves and ask why we as a nation have, as Chombo so eloquently put it, an ‘upsurge of indiscriminate vending’. Rather than regarding hawkers as eyesores, we should see them as an important reminder of all that is wrong with our country.
Quite frankly, we should let vendors sell their wares even from the top of a church spire. As long as people are selling airtime cards, we can all rest easily at night. Chasing cars takes some doing – something which a well-fed, corpulent man like Chombo has never had to do. No man who spends the day chasing customers has the energy left for leaping over Durawalls or snatching purses